sparklehound

Today I am mostly sheltering from the elements

Turned out nice again.

Avoiding the hailstones, Good Friday afternoon on Upper Street.

Today I am mostly enjoying silver and brown

My Columbia Road pussy willow is proving to be a super-value buy. Still gorgeous.

My how you've grown

Look at my little hydrangea! I gave her a lovely feed and a good drink before we went off to Paris for the week (ooh, Paris...) and left her on the - theoretically - sunny south-facing bedroom window sill and look! She's flourishing.

I am excited beyond words.

Freezing the square

Quite spectacularly cool and tingley-fying!

Via the lovely and always inspiring Mrs Eliot Books

(Now I really have to get some work done...)

Home sweet home

I've been wanting some Aunty Cookie fabric for a long time but I think this is the print that I just have to have. Is it just me or is there a little bit of Rob Ryan-esque charm about it?

There are those winter trees again, I just can't seem to get enough of that twiggy goodness at the moment. But this time they come with BIRDS! and pretty little BIRDCAGES!! It reminds me of walking through Central Park one summer evening a few years back and spotting a wonderland of chinese laterns high high up in the trees.

And as for the Home Sweet Home wafting through the branches... well I can scarcely contain myself!

I've been meaning to make a cushion for my work chair and I think this is going to fit the bill verrrry nicely. The other thought, though, is a dear friend who I suspect could do with a dose of long distance love after a b-iiiig international move. Her need for a little house warming present might well be greater than my need for extra padding.

Meanwhile I'm trying to work out exactly what I need this trim for, because obviously I do need it. At the moment I'm thinking it would perk up a shopping bag very nicely...

Ha! Hark at me with my plans - I mean, its not as though I'm studiously avoiding a ma-hooosive deadline or keep getting lost in the detail or anything! Oh no, not me...

All images by Aunty Cookie

Loving cup

The colours, the secret scratched flower, the traced lines of the duralux-bistro-glass-esque shape, the notion that they would be just as perfect for cosily sipping chai tea/mulled wine/hot chocolate/morning coffee as for delicately (OK, greedily) scoffing chocolate mousse/goosebury fool/eaton mess...

At just US$20 they're affordable too. In fact I'm struggling to find something about these Confiture Cups by ceramacist Molly Hatch that I don't completely love.

If only my crockery cupboard wasn't already perilously full.

Still, breakages do happen...

Photo by Molly Hatch Ceramics

Spoken. Word.

Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves at how lucky we are to live where we do right now. On Monday night we headed up the road to Cargo for the first installment of our two night spoken word extravaganza. Saul Williams was the headline act - what a performer. But Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip were the main draw for us. And they didn't disappoint. We're going to see them again next week, supporting Billy Bragg at The Roundhouse. Yeay!

Photo, of Scroobius Pip and Dan Le Sac in full flow, by Matt Perdeaux

The belle of Shoreditch

We were out and about at a (slightly strange) loosely blog-based comedy gig last night as part of the London Word Festival. Monday night's gig was a welcome relief from The Deadline but there were times last night when I felt my time would have been better spent at the pooter getting some more ticks on the list. The feeling has grown today as I've been a totally pooped waste of space at a stage in the project when I absolutely cannot afford waste of space days!

Still, it wasn't all bad. The gig (blogged here and here) had some high points, we had a slap up supper at one of my favourites, the Story Deli, on the way and Hawksmoors Christ Church at Spitalfields was looking particularly handsome on the way home (unlike me, Ginger remembered his camera!).

There were strange goings on afoot as Brick Lane was closed by the police so we had to walk the long way home. We passed an old-school streetwalker on Commercial Road, a pretty girl complete with thigh-high boots, sussies and suspenders; a sight so unusual in these parts that I thought at first that she was attempting an ironic post-modern statement (along with every second pretty young thing in Shoreditch). Alas not.
Never a dull moment round here, I tell you.

Photo by Matt Perdeaux

Nice pear

How unbelievably fantastic is this ring? Its by New Zealand based jeweller, and son of a gold prospector, Ash Hilton. Apparently Ash is working on ways to integrate the gold dust collected by his dad into his work - could it get any cooler?

Not only is this ring super pretty, with a lovely touch of humour, the simplicity of the pierced form is just so elegant and efficient. And, I'm thinking, much more diet friendly than an egg for Easter...

I'm also coveting this cuff, from his collection, in quite a serious way:

So satisfyingly chunky, so perfectly softened by those wind swept trees (winter branches are really doing it for me at the moment). *sigh*

Images by Ash Hilton

Pillow talk

How delicious are these? Completely hand made, from illustration to cutting, by the powers behind etsy shop FieldandSeaPaper (sister shop of FieldandSea) these little beauties would make the most fabulous packaging for little gifts or pieces of jewellery. I wonder whether they take bulk orders...

Work, college, life and everything are a little bit mad at the moment, though hopefully things should settle down soon when a couple of college and other deadlines pass leaving just the h-uuuuge great big scary work one to deal with. That is a very big and very scary one though... and getting bigger!

Images from fieldandseapaper